Welcome to the website of the Eighth International Conference on Diversity in Organisations, Communities and Nations. This Conference is to be held in Montréal, Canada 17-20 June 2008. This conference will address a range of critically important themes in the study of diversity today. Main speakers will include some of the world’s leading thinkers in the field, as well as numerous paper, workshop and colloquium presentations by researchers and practitioners.

If you would like to know more about this Conference, bookmark the Diversity Conference site and return for further information ─ the site is regularly updated. You may also wish to subscribe to the Conference and Journal Newsletter.

The International Conference on Diversity in Organisations, Communities and Nations

Now a major international Conference, the Diversity Conference was first held in Sydney, Australia in
2000;
Melbourne, Australia in
2001;
University of Hawai’i, Manoa, Hawai'i, USA in
2003;
University of California, Los Angeles, California, USA in
2004;
Institute of Ethnic Administrators, Beijing, China in
2005;
Xavier University and Louisiana State University, New Orleans, Lousiana, USA in
2006;
and OZW-School of Health, Amsterdam, the Netherlands in
2007.

The Conference has a history of bringing together scholarly, government and
practice-based participants with an interest in the issues of diversity and
community. The Conference examines the concept of diversity as a positive
aspect of a global world and globalised society. Diversity is in many ways
reflective of our present world order, but there are ways of taking this
further without necessary engendering its alternatives: racism, conflict,
discrimination and inequity. Diversity as a mode of social existence can be
projected in ways that deepen the range of human experience.
The Conference will seek to explore the full range of what diversity means
and explore modes of diversity in real-life situations of living together
in community. The Conference supports a move away from simple affirmations
that 'diversity is good' to a much more nuanced account of the effects and
uses of diversity on differently situated communities in the context of our
current epoch of globalisation.

In addition to linguistic, cultural, ethnic and ‘racial’ diversity, the
Conference will also pursue its well established interest in other aspects
of diversity, including the intersecting dynamics of gender, sexual orientation,
(dis)ability, locale and socio-economic background.

The Conference looks at the realities of diversity today, critically as well
as optimistically and strategically. The Conference will be a place for speaking
about diversity, and in ways that range from the 'big picture' and the theoretical,
to the very practical and everyday realities of diversity in organisations,
communities and civic life.

In the realm of civic life, local and national communities daily negotiate
the diversity resulting from immigration, refugee movement, settlement and
indigenous claims to prior ownership and sovereignty. And at the same time,
communities increasingly recognise and negotiate a plethora of other
intersecting and sometimes contrary diversities. At the local level this
may create a kind of civic pluralism, a new way of living in community.
Nationally, governments sit uneasily between increasingly demanding local
diversities and the cultural and political forces of globalisation. And
within organisations, 'diversity management' has emerged as a field of
endeavour to negotiate human resource and customer relationship issues
arising from differences of gender, ethnicity/race, sexual orientation and
disability (to name a few aspects of diversity). To what extent, however,
do these remain marginal managerial concerns? Could or should diversity become
a 'mainstream' issue for the whole organisation?

The Diversity Conference is a presenter’s Conference, comprised of numerous parallel sessions. The Conference organising committee is inviting proposals to present 30-minute papers, 60-minute workshops or 90-minute colloquium sessions. These may be academic or research papers, or presentations describing educational initiatives.

The International Journal of Diversity in Organisations, Communities and Nations